Oct
28
Digital Textbooks: Oregon Adopts an Electronic Textbook
October 28, 2009 | Tagged digital textbook initiative | 3 Comments
While many states talk about digital textbooks and some even pass legislation enabling their use, Oregon has taken a giant leap by adopting an electronic textbook for K-8 science.
Discovery Education Science – Elementary and Middle School Solutions were adopted by the Oregon State Board of Education at their October 23, 2009 meeting. Oregon, which has a seven-year adoption cycle, has approved these electronic, subscription-based textbooks from 2010 until 2016.
According to Discovery’s web site, Discovery Education Science has up-to-date, standards-based virtual labs, simulations, reading passages and more, coupled with a real-time assessment component that measures student’s progress. In other words, Discovery has disassembled the linear textbook and has created an interactive resource that teaches science by having students do science.
Discovery intends to submit this resource for CLRN review, and we’re looking forward to exploring it.
Comments
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Hi Brian,
FYI: California’s SBE approved an all digital textbook solution for Algebra 1 by publisher Kinetic “Books” during the 2007 adoption cycle.
Best regards,
Nancy Silva
[Reply]
Get ready people, this may well be the new standard for K-12 education.
[Reply]
Nancy is right. California has actually adopted dozens of digital textbooks in the past few years. I’ll be writing about them in my next post.
[Reply]